Tuesday, May 3, 2011

rainbow cake

It's a good thing that Cha's program is not quite school because we get away with bending the no birthday cakes/healthy snacks rules once in a while. Madame Sophie, Cha's teacher is always impressed by the goodies I bring her and the kids, mainly because she's not a baker, not necessarily because of my mad skills.

They were working on colors on Cha's birthday, and when came snack time, Mme Sophie had the kids guess what color the cake was going to be. Little did she know, pretty much every kid was right with their guess!

I've been admiring rainbow cakes from afar for a little while, with Whisk-Kid, Sweetapolita and The Great Cake Company having made particularly sweet ones, and the last one being the inspiration behind the clever decorating job that was super to hide my less than spectacular icing skills.

I always thought that making one of these would just be so much work (and dishes) but decided to make it anyways. And after finding my new favorite white cake recipe that calls for dirtying just one bowl, the task didn't seem so daunting anymore.

I used 6 inch pans to make the six layers, and I found the amount of batter this recipe yields is just perfect. The layers were thin and baked evenly so I didn't have to trim them to get level layers. I used my kitchen scale to divide the batter evenly between the bowls, added food color, and baked the cakes in two batches, 16 minutes each batch. Let them cool, then stacked them with store bought frosting between the layers. I tried to keep the frosting at an absolute minimum as I didn't want angry moms to be calling me because I'm feeding their kids sugar...

I thought this cake was a good opportunity to practice my frosting skills since I knew I was going to cover it up with sprinkles anyways. I had a great time with the crumb coat. It smoothed out nice, with no gaps or sagging or anything.

But the actual frosting part after I let the crumb coat chill out in the fridge was trickier. Much better than my lemon blueberry cake, but still not as good as I had hoped. I'm much better at removing frosting from the cake than laying it on. Oh well. I guess I'll have to keep finding ways to hide the icing job until I get better at it!

Then came the tricky part! Covering the side of the cake with sprinkles. I set up over the sink, with a bowl of sprinkles and took handfuls to press onto the cake that I was holding with one hand at an angle. It was pretty effective, but there were sprinkles everywhere! And it took way less sprinkles than I thought. Less than an bottle actually.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this cake. I just wish I had gotten a picture of the inside. I'm sure it was gorgeous and super yummy! And thankfully, this was the last of Charlotte's three cakes for her forth birthday! Ooof!

21 comments:

Jaime from The Great Cake Company dropping in to say you rocked the rainbow cake! I love it, and I can't decide which version I like better... the one with colored filling as part of the rainbow, or white filling with only the rainbow cake. I am going to have to try your way next time to know for sure. Nice work, and thanks for mentioning me :)

What a happy cake!!! I love all the sprinkles too!!! The rainbow cakes must be popular right now because two of the blogs I read have them on there today!!!http://mykentuckyhome-kim.blogspot.com/2011/05/rainbow-cake-with-white-chocolate.html

What a lovely cake! I'm sure the birthday girl was thrilled. This is my first visit to your site and I've been browsing through your earlier entries. I really like the food you feature here. You've created a lovely spot for your readers to enjoy and I'll definitely be back. I hope you have a great day. Blessings...Mary

I put a link to the recipe I used in the post, but I admit that my links aren't very obvious! Here's the recipe for the white buttermilk cake I used: http://bourbonnatrixbakes.blogspot.com/2011/05/strawberry-shortcake-cake.htmlAlthough you can use any white cake recipe that can tolerate some mixing for the food color. None of that "mix until just combined" stuff :)

may i know what is the tips to make the perfect edge? i baked before and the edge is brown ...so i need to trim it and then left with lots of crumble, what tin do you use and do uu use partchment paper? thanks alot

hi lia. my layers were really thin, so the cake didn't need to bake long. also, the cake recipe i used pulls the cake away from the edges of the pan as it cools. i use light baking pans, and spray them with baking/cooking spray. i used parchment paper on the bottom of the pan only. hope this helps!

BOURBONNATRIX BAKES...

... but she doesn't do the dishes.

Bourbonnatrix bakes for her husband and her two daughters near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She has a communications job in the education sector. She likes to bake.

Thanks for visiting. Hope you like what you read. I'd love for you to comment on my posts, or contact me by email at bourbonnatrix (at) yahoo (dot) com and let me know what you think. Looking forward to reading you!